‘We are what we repeatedly do’ said someone who may or may not have been Aristotle. In which case, I am a Jaffa Cake.
Whoever it was who said that then went on to say that ‘excellence is not an act, but a habit’ which shows that he probably hadn’t spent much time in the GU28 post code area. Or at least not in my bit of it.
Excellence and I concluded years ago that we were like two ships that pass in the night, every now and again sending brief flickers of mutual interest by some mysterious semaphore across the salty ocean, and then relapsing into silence. I would, indeed, like to be excellent, and excellence probably wouldn’t mind my being part of the gang every now and again. But otherwise, we keep a respectable distance.
Part of the Covid nightmare for many of us, I suspect, is having to see other peoples’ excellence displayed on social media rather too often. You know, that all too perfect sourdough loaf, those exquisite orchids, that immaculate hung hinged gate. And when you see it, you can’t help yourself: it reinforces the sense of hopelessness in those of us who are, shall we say, impractical.
I set out to try to challenge this all over again yesterday afternoon by using the residue of an enormous chopped down bamboo to create a few hurdles to screen off an ugly bit of fence at the bottom of the garden. It was a simple enough job, and there were any amount of people, generally bearded people, on Youtube explaining how to knit the bamboo in between the coppiced hazel uprights. In theory, and on the screen, it looked so simple that even I couldn’t mess it up.
I went to the common and chopped down 28 hazel uprights and brought them triumphantly home. A cycling family even stopped to ask me what I was creating, and I did that thing I hate myself for doing- bluffing competence and confidence. By the time I was done, they probably thought I was a cross between Jude the Obscure and Alan Titchmarsh.
Back on the lawn, I ended up with about 14 different tools out of the shed, from sledge hammer to secateurs, and an intermediate product that looked like some thing from one of those fundraising films after a hurricane has devastated someone’s banana plantation.
‘Please give generously,’ they say, ‘so that we can get Pablo’s plantains up and running again.’
I tried a second panel, shorter and sturdier to accommodate the rather weedy strands of bamboo, but it very quickly looked like what I imagine the dividing screen inside a cheap knocking shop to be like, in some dingy Asian coastal sex resort.
I refused all help from the Practical One, and, after a drink to find inspiration, set out on a third, which simply collapsed in a forlorn heap like a drunkard’s wigwam. And on it went, with an end product that was as far removed from the bearded Youtuber’s as Dominic Cumming’s optician is from Barnard Castle.
And, despite the fact that the incompetence of people like me gives happiness to thousands, millions very probably, it causes intense personal sadness and jealousy. In the days when we used to go out, I was the sort of person that would go to other people’s houses and do the ‘post restoration’ tour, mug of tea in my hand, and gasp at all those things that Hector has cleverly done.
‘Oh, this is just a little vanity cabinet he knocked up for me last weekend, when he was waiting for the milk to come to the boil.’
And Hector smiles modestly, as we walk past the cap on the wall (rowing blue at Trinity), the astounding picture of the hippo (‘Oh, I was lucky. I just swum over to it, got it to stay still, and took it’), and the parchment confirming his knighthood.
So tomorrow, spare a thought for the also-rans. The most we can ever aspire to is grim enthusiasm.
This has been a public service announcement. Behave accordingly.
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